Theses

The members of the i3GO also supervise academic theses. If you are a student of University of Oulu and interested in particular aspect of or in general software testing, reviews or inspections, do not hesitate to contact one of the teachers in the group.

Doctoral Theses

Improving the software inspection process with patterns

Harjumaa, L..
Doctoral thesis, Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, 2005.
Acta Universitatis Ouluensis, Scientiae Rerum Naturalium, A 447, ISBN 951-42-7893-3, 2005.

Licentiate Theses

Tailorability of Inspection - Especially for Minor Projects

Iisakka, J.
Licenciate thesis, Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, 2003.




Hajautetun ohjelmistotarkastuksen tukeminen XML-teknologioilla

Hedberg, H.
In Finnish, Supporting Distributed Software Inspections with XML Technologies.
Licenciate thesis, Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, 2003.

Master Theses

On software testing and reviewing focused Master theses (supervised by i3GO group) completed in Department of Information Processing Science (TOL) since summer 2004

Correlation between test coverage and the structure and quality of the code being tested

Kanstren Teemu (26.5.2004)
Comprehensive programmer unit testing is sometimes considered to be linked to the structure and quality of the code being tested. In this thesis a simple framework for measuring this relationship is presented. This framework is based on the existing QMOOD model. The framework is applied to three open source projects to test its applicability and see the results for these projects. The programmer unit testing is studied in the form of test coverage. As a result some of the measured metrics seem to get higher, some lower and for some no connection is observed as the test coverage rises




Software defect management in product projects with long supplier chains

Kurikka Arto (17.6.2004)
The author studies in thesis software defect management and defect prevention in the context of the product project. The impact of long supplier chains on the defect management is observed, in particular. The results of thesis showed that long supplier chains were related to long integration chains, to the diverse use of different defect management procedures and defect databases, and to the difficulty of finding the person responsible for the defect. It was concluded based on these findings that improvement could be achieved by harmonizing the defect management procedures within both the product project and the suppliers. By using a uniform defect database, significant improvements in defect management can be attained.




The automation of integration testing in the case of network elements through an automation platform

Kirves Jyri (3.11.2004)
The author compares in thesis two conventional test system-specific automation solutions to the new approach based on an automation platform. The comparison studies the benefits of an automation platform and the major problems in automation of integration testing in the case of network elements. The comparison is based on four characteristics, maintainability, number of functionalities, controllability and usability. None of the evaluated solutions was best in all characteristics, but each has some strong point. The automation platform is a good choice, when the number of functionalities is increasing. The platform also standardizes the structure of automation implementation and thus improves maintainability.




Test Driven Development in Mobile Java Environment

Hanhineva Antti (3.11.2004)
This study uses conceptual-theoretical approach to present an approach for TDD in mobile Java environment. The approach is composed of tools, their integration and changes in program code to enable TDD in Java based mobile Java environment. Theory testing approach is used to evaluate the proposed approach. The evaluation is done in a project where a mobile application is developed for real market in mobile Java environment. The results of the evaluation show that the TDD practice is difficult to adopt and the project did not use TDD as much as other reported studies implicate. Therefore the applicability of the proposed approach cannot be unambiguously stated. However the qualitative results gathered from the project implicate that the development team did not consider the proposed approach difficult to use. The problems were caused because of teams' inexperience of TDD practice and its applicability for the application area in the evaluation project.




A Reading Technique for Inspecting Correct Usage of Design Patterns

Kotaniemi Juha (24.11.2004)
Software inspection is a powerful method for detecting defects in software documentation. Inspections can be used to evaluate all types of artefacts including code, requirements and designs. If the design is not straightforward, which is often the case when utilizing object oriented design patterns, inspecting the design documentation may become difficult. Inspectors should be provided adequate guidance and instruments to efficiently read through the material and defects in it. This paper introduces a reading technique that helps the inspector to recognize typical problems in design pattern use. The reading technique was experimented by 70 computer science students, and it helped the inspectors to reveal defects in usage of design patterns and would have been difficult to find without assistance.




A Support Method for Automating the Functional Testing of the User Interface of an Extensive Embedded System

Turtinen Markus (2.12.2004)
The method presented in thesis is based on the existing practical and theoretical principles of model-based testing combined with the recent research on model-based development. The externally observable behaviour of a mobile phone software is modeled as hierarchical state machine components divided on feature level. The feature dependencies of mobile phone software are presented in models by using global state variables. The essential solutions concerning the testing architecture are given, which enables a possibility of creating sufficient controllability in testing the user interface software of mobile phones.




A defect classification method for defect management in the component factory

Räisänen Ilpo (20.12.2004)
The author studies different methods for defect classification and chooses the most appropriate one for the target company. The chosen method is the ODC (Orthogonal Defect Classification) method. The thesis introduces its adoption to the company. The adoption proceeds through a pilot project and the results will be used when planning further adoption and implementation.




Motivators and demotivators of peer reviews in software companies in the Oulu region

Huttunen Anna (20.12.2004)
Peer reviews are an efficient quality assurance method in software development. Several reviewing methods exist to match the needs of different organizations and situations. Still, peer reviews are not practiced as commonly as one would suppose. This study aims at finding out what types of reviewing methods are in use in software companies, surveying the most important benefits of peer reviews and investigating reasons for not utilizing reviews. The study is carried out in companies locating in the Oulu region, but the results can be generalized to all small software companies. The results show that companies that use reviews have adjusted the process for their own needs. The main motivator for arranging reviews is the decreased amount of defects in products while the other aspects of reviews, such as process improvement or knowledge sharing are not considered as important. The main demotivator for reviews is lack of time and people resources.




Ensuring test coverage in the automated functional testing environment

Petäjäjärvi Pasi (4.5.2005)
Frequently launched new software products cause problems for adequate testing. Their development cycles are very short and due to this the manual testing with good coverage is impossible. The automation of software testing is then required to ensure test coverage. The author studies in thesis analysis methods for test coverage, tools for measuring test coverage and tailoring of the chosen tool to support coverage measurement in the target company. The tailoring process produced an automated functional testing environment, which was further evaluated in the thesis. The results of evaluation were promising and in the chosen test cases the testing cycle has been decreased from days to some minutes.




Component Framework for a TTCN-3 based Test System

Karinsalo Mikko (4.5.2005)
This work focuses on TTCN-3 test systems. The current test systems provide no support for easy adaptation of test system components, and they typically couple all required adapters and codecs in a single entity. To overcome the limitations of current TTCN-3 test systems, the system structure was further refined and a component framework was developed for test system components. Theoretical basis for the framework was taken from the systematic software reuse theory. This includes the software reuse factor in product-line architectures, component-based and object-oriented reuse techniques, and framework technology. Constructive research method was used in this work, and a component framework was produced in order to increase flexibility and improve reusability in a TTCN-3 test system. Usage of the framework reduces implementation work by enabling reusability within the test system.